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Friday, 5 June 2015

The number of people playing games has never been
higher. Three main things have happened
to facilitate this:

Mobile has put a high-end gaming device into the
hands of over a billion users, many in countries such as China that haven’t had
access to gaming before

Free-to-play has encouraged those who wouldn't
normally pay to download a game to give them a go

Digital distribution has allowed developers to
access consumers all around the world, rather than relying on those retail
channels they may have been connected to before

While, twenty years ago, we would be delighted to make a
game that reached half a million players, and ecstatic to hit a million, nowadays we
can realistically reach ten or even one hundred times as many – and often need
to, if we’re to make a profit. So what do we need to do differently to appeal
to this broader, wider market?

It’s easy for us to make assumptions about what our players
will understand and enjoy – after all, if we love it, so should they, right?

What I've found from working with Japanese and Asian
developers and publishers over the years is that, although we may be converging
into a global market, players may have taken a completely different gaming journey
from us. Take China – now a huge mobile
games market, but a country that had no gaming systems for decades. All the
expectations and knowledge we, and many of our players, have built up over
those years are not there. I recently heard from someone who’d watched Chinese
players on a well-known mobile platform game.
He was amazed to see them studiously avoid the gold coins in the
environment, in the belief they’d be killed if they touched them. It’s easy for
us to assume that players will understand what they’re supposed to do, but
that’s a dangerous assumption.

This isn't a one-way street. A lot of my time is spent
playing Japanese games – it’s fascinated me why the Japanese mobile market is
so lucrative, but why the biggest titles there often fail to make an impact in
the west. Beyond the obvious issues of western and Japanese graphic styles
being different, there are many things that Japanese games assume their
audience will understand that western gamers generally don’t. Whether it’s turn-based combat, buddy
systems, live events or gacha mechanics, Japanese games throw players into
these systems with no explanation – they don’t need one, everyone already knows
how to play. When those games are
localised and launched in the west, many players are lost forever in the first
few minutes of play, dropping out due to sheer confusion and frustration. Those that persevere often go on to love the
games, matching the high retention and spending levels of their Japanese
counterparts, but so much opportunity is lost because players are not
introduced gently into the mechanics.

Even if you’re not targeting those markets yourselves, I’d
advise readers to play the English versions of the biggest Japanese and Asian
titles. To do so will you give some insight as to how confused you might be
making some of your own players, not just those abroad, but also those newer
gamers closer to.
It will also expose you to game systems that maybe don’t make sense to
us at first glance – ‘auto battle’ being a great example. To many western gamers and developers, the
idea of a game that plays itself seems ludicrous. Auto battle only makes sense
when you play a game for a long time. What drew you into a game in the first
place – probably a fun, tactile, interactive experience, is really only the
window dressing on the game that really engages people. What sits underneath
that seemingly simple action title or puzzler is likely a deep and engaging
game about collection, team building, social interaction and strategic
planning. In that context, where the real fun is to be had once you've mastered
the game underneath, auto-play makes more sense – removing the need to grind
and allowing you to focus on what really matters.

The most successful mobile games tend to be those that are
easy for people to understand, enjoyable in the first minute of play but which
offer an ever-deeper and more compelling experience for those players who keep going.
The challenge for developers is marrying the accessibility needed to attract
global or inexperienced players with the depth needed to keep everyone engaged
long term. It’s not easy but, as the top grossing charts prove, when you get it
right, you can get it very, very right.

Harry Holmwood - European CEO of Marvelous, a Japanese
mobile and console publisher, and also a Director of The Secret Police, a
London-based mobile gaming startup.